Black Forest

by Valérie Mréjen

  I’d look both ways several times at street corners, putting the oft-repeated counsel into practice with new zeal. The neighborhood I am sometimes so bored of walking in would seem to me a curious maze of enticing window displays, and the shops selling ornate faux-antique metal candlesticks and picture frames for farewell gifts or over-the-hill parties would lure us in and, who knows, maybe even sell us something. She might not have fully regained her critical faculties and have lost the ability to detect ugliness in certain objects. With a twinge of embarrassment, I picture her lingering, for example, between a cheetah-skin rug and a gilded rhinoceros, in awe of the too-shiny marble and crystal furnishings under the spotlights of a boutique lined with mirrors. What I’d want to show her—what, for my part, I’d think worthy of her attention—wouldn’t interest her, and her eye would stray to details that held no meaning for me. I’d insist on bringing her to a café in my neighborhood where I sometimes meet those friends I sense will be partial to this slightly dated and preserved islet; run by a perfectly Chabrolian woman who is always elegant and smartly dressed, her jet-black hair pinned up in a chignon, her full bosom protruding beneath a crepe blouse where a cut-glass pendant swings at the end of a gold chain, the place is calm and secluded, brimming with bouquets all year long. It’s reminiscent of a country hotel, and small enough that the arrival of a new customer, announced by the softest chiming of bells, is always considered an event. A precious silence reigns there, precious when you’re used to the soundtrack of the street: buses, trucks, heavy-duty trucks, cars, scooters, bicycles (electric or not), delivery vans, minivans, motorcycles, mopeds, strollers (motorized or not), roller skaters, skateboarders, pedestrians in pumps or in flat-heeled shoes. But the almost religious tranquility of the place, and the presence of all these cut flowers fated to wilt in a few days’ time, would have for her an air of déjà vu, and nothing more.

  AFTER THE 2004 TSUNAMI, THE name of a blue-eyed woman, referred to by her family as “our sunshine,” is printed in the missing persons column of a daily newspaper. She’d been spending her Christmas vacation on the coast of one of the countries where the disaster struck. The notice does not speculate, only reports a concern, barely alluding to an eventuality no one wants to acknowledge, for they all continue to hope. But soon they can’t stop themselves from stringing together and reiterating a chain of theories that drive one another out, narrowing the possibilities (roughly the same for most everyone stunned by this news): she would have called her daughter. She would’ve sent her a text message, even a short one. She would’ve borrowed a phone if her own had sunk into the murky water filled with corpses and debris. She would’ve found a hotel to call from, or asked someone else to call; she would certainly have found a way to reach her. She must be wounded, or unconscious, or paralyzed. Lying on a stretcher, emptied of strength and courage, she can neither carry out this task nor make herself understood in English. She probably has no paper or pencil, no way of communicating the number and area code. All the lines are surely down or busy. But as the days go by, these theories invented to keep hope alive are exhausted, one after another.

  A BURNING SMELL DRIFTS INTO the apartment, seemingly coming from the floor above. She goes upstairs and finds herself on her neighbor’s landing; thick gray plumes of smoke billow out from under the door. She hears a loud noise from inside and knocks, wondering if anyone is even there. A student, visibly disturbed and in the throes of a breakdown, opens the door to a disheveled room, at the center of which can be seen, on the floor, a pile of blazing papers and objects. In an instinct of self-preservation, she yells at him to put out the fire. Everything happens quickly: the young man grabs a knife and stabs this woman of nearly forty, admired by her colleagues, loved by her family, the mother of two young children. Downstairs in their apartment, her husband, worried by the length of her absence, rushes up to meet her and finds her covered in blood, already in agony. She expires in his arms while her murderer leaps out the window and falls seven stories to his death.

  WE WOULD LEAVE THIS CHARMING place, and probably for the best since, truth be told, I don’t know what she would’ve ordered. We rarely ever went out to cafés or, rather, it was so long ago I have no memory of her taste.

  We clearly wouldn’t know how to begin again. I’d be afraid of seeming hurried, of sharing needless information, of trying to make up for lost time by talking far too much, inevitably marring this fantasy reunion.

  ANOTHER DREAM: WE’RE RIDING ALONG the highway in a minivan, an Espace model, in the company of two married friends. The husband, Bob, is an old man now but livelier and more enthusiastic than most young people, which fills those around him with a kind of envious admiration.

  Still, we’re a bit more apprehensive each time we ask him how he’s been, and it’s hard not to think of the day when he won’t be doing so well—as he himself does, for that matter, with blunt pragmatism and a passionate hatred of all sentimentality.

  He shrinks from the gestures of affection, from the excessive politeness and sympathy of strong, robust, well-meaning people who tilt their head to the side when they listen to him or offer him their arm on the staircase. When we ask after his health, his wife’s cheerful response is always a relief, a temporary victory over fate. He’d been an eminent cancer specialist before he was forced into retirement, and had too often rubbed shoulders with death throughout his life to be truly afraid of it.

  In my dream, as the car continues along the highway, we try to recall the title of a Lubitsch film. It’s never the right one; again and again we think we have it, but keep grasping to no avail. I suggest The Shop Around the Corner, Ninotchka, and others, but the one we’re trying to name eludes us, and it’s terribly frustrating. Bob and his wife are not really cinephiles and I’m surprised to find myself carrying on this conversation with them. In the end, I fail to come up with the answer to our riddle. On waking, I go to look up the filmography of the prince of comedy: it was Heaven Can Wait.

  I COULD BEGIN HERE, AND use this story as a way to start the conversation, adding as an aside that heaven could, in effect, have waited a little longer, that it’s a shame to have gone so soon. I’d try and make a simple declaration—I’ve missed you for instance—but such a common turn of phrase as this would seem all wrong. And then the words would remain stuck, unable to emerge from the depths of my throat, trapped by vocal cords that are suddenly stiff and swollen and exude bitter bile from the same place where a knot forms, every so often, whenever I happen to say “my mother.”

  I WOULD START AGAIN FROM the beginning: Le Printemps still exists, the Carte Orange pass has disappeared; her father died alone, leaving behind a few debts and four grandchildren; the neighborhood beyond the boulevard Périphérique, where we used to live, has expanded and now consists mainly of towers and office buildings. We sold the house that we’d bought on a twenty-year loan, which was paid off by the insurance.

  ONCE HER AMAZEMENT AT THE offerings in the decor shops had passed, and her powers of discernment kicked in again, she’d no doubt be appalled by certain aspects of the present; in the first place, the way people have of proudly rallying behind the respected—and even feared—cult of the carefree. Having attached so much importance to decency and discretion, she’d feel taken aback by a certain pervading boorishness.

  Of course, we could dream of joining this club and of finally throwing off our chains, the limitations, real or imagined, that have set up shop in our subconscious whether we like it or not. I know of many people who would make ideal members and yet who don’t dare apply, for fear of being deemed unfit—and even so, given the chance, not only would they readily empty their wallets, they’d also find the membership fees too low. One, an intelligent, sensitive, erudite man, believes he’s useless and will say as much to whoever will listen, and in truth, to himself most of all. Another, a gorgeous, exuberantly funny woman, sees herself a bumbling moron and looks aghast as soon as she opens her mouth, convinced she’s let slip an uncouth remark that’s bound
to reveal her stupidity. The minute she returns home from a dinner party, she sends out messages apologizing for all the nonsense she spoke. Yet another, gifted, charming, putting her talents to work at a prestigious organization, has lived for years with an inexplicably arrogant deadbeat, and ended up believing, like him, that she really can’t be taken anywhere. What’s more, she often tells friends who adore her that she’d rather avoid giving her own opinion, since it isn’t worth much. As for the man—who has no qualms about living under her roof and off her paycheck—he approves of this restraint, and strongly encourages it. For once, he thinks, she’s got it right.

  It must be a relief to finally find a way to feel more confident, to move through life unfettered by self-doubt, to stop tormenting yourself with the need to justify even the smallest action. But this is not what is meant by ‘being carefree’; in fact, it is quite the opposite. You must proclaim your flaws as virtues—as priceless advantages, even—and if only by starting to believe as much, obstinately and without further delay. I don’t think she’d understand this peculiar new trend.

  THE MAN IN THAT SCENE in Raymond Depardon’s Faits divers has no time to grasp the situation: the woman stretched out beside him on the thin mattress on the floor who looks as if she’s sleeping and has taken barbiturates, simply exceeded her usual dose and passed away in her sleep. Everything in the small room is evocative of the 1980s: the photo of the Eiffel Tower, the tabletop on trestle legs, the clip-on lamp with its adjustable arm, prints of famous paintings and movie posters, everyday objects typical of that time. There’s a slightly rancid odor that must penetrate your nostrils on first walking in the door—a whiff of congealed sweat, old laundry, scalps grimy with pollution, rugs that ought to be shaken out, kitchen fumes that have permanently impregnated the walls—then gradually dissipate after a time spent in the room.

  The officer asks if they were married and the man begins to say that they were about to be, that they’d prepared the documents, and then bursts into tears again, understanding, afresh, what has just happened. In the course of the weeks to come, he’ll be brutally confronted with the event in more ways still: through persistent logical deadlocks, the need to cancel plans, the sporadic and totally unpredictable arrival of promotional offers from a coupon service, which he won’t have the courage to throw away and whose subscription he will, bizarrely, be even less capable of canceling. This is why he’ll sometimes dread opening his mailbox: for fear of finding brightly colored brochures promising discounts on window installations, or on eyeglass frames she’d never needed in her lifetime—not at her age, anyway.

  AFTER RETURNING HOME FROM A weekend by the sea with her son and grandchildren, a woman enters a strange state that somewhat troubles those close to her, even if it doesn’t appear all that serious. From the outside, the situation might seem comical: halfway through a lucid sentence, she will drift off into what sounds like nonsense. When the symptoms persist and begin to prove worrisome, her sister ends up calling a doctor to the house. Soon brothers and cousins are exchanging phone calls and updates in tones already solemn, if still incredulous.

  They suggest she consent to a few examinations, and the moment she steps through the doors of the hospital, her condition transforms irreversibly into a condition. She starts babbling, and her loved ones use the expression “in her own world” to try and make sense of this inexplicable phenomenon. It’s soon found to be a matter of a sodium deficiency, as though the woman had been absorbing liters of water without consuming enough salt, which is odd, since she salts her food generously and doesn’t drink enough fluids. This explanation seems misplaced and it’s difficult to understand how a sodium deficiency no one had been aware of could make her talk gibberish, or call her sons several times in a row just to confirm that she has their numbers, as if she were a screwball character in one of those zany comic strips in waiting room magazines.

  The doctors learn nothing from the X-rays or her other test results, and the family decides that this must be normal, a sign that the state of confusion is passing or had been aggravated by the hospital setting itself. Though the details that the medical staff gradually delivers are baffling to the uninitiated, they nonetheless circulate, phone call by phone call, as the hours wear on, and whenever a new term is introduced, those who hear it first do their best to explain it to the others. Finally, the diagnosis is made, and everyone takes a moment to grasp that the illness, alluded to by an unfamiliar euphemism or another inscrutable phrase, is very grave indeed, and well known to them all. And from that point on she deteriorates rapidly: the cycle of treatments exhausts her, her hair falls out, morale weakens, and the uncontrollable, nervous laughter that erupts between brothers quickly gives way to tears. They cling to what they can and try to find in all of this some incongruity or odd detail that, under the circumstances, triggers fits of wild hilarity—the “as seen on TV” sticker on the window of a funeral home or an employee’s garish necktie become irresistible fodder for jokes among family members.

  The two adult sons have occasional panic attacks and experience strange somatic symptoms that appear out of nowhere, sensory malfunctions and other disturbances which, after medical consultation, seem to also stem from a kind of anxiety.

  TO HELP FIGHT OFF THIS malaise, the younger brother’s wife takes him by the hand and leads him outside for a walk along the streets. It will do them good, she says, and it’s better not to stay holed up. They walk across Paris, on this morning a palette of grays: the nearly black lead of the asphalt, the dark granite of the lumpy cobblestones covered in dust, the dull flannel edges of the sidewalks, the raw steel of the sky’s reflection in the gutter water, the walls of adjoined buildings along the Hausmannian boulevards, zinc rooftops stained blue-gray by the rain. They cross the Seine, whose restless surface adds a splash of beige to this otherwise monochromatic landscape, and their footsteps lead them to the boulevard de l’Hôpital. At the little zoo in the Jardin des Plantes, yellow and ultramarine frogs with tiny, suckered feet are kept in aquariums that have been heated to simulate their home climate. A panel explains that they are highly toxic and that contact with their skin can be fatal. Certain species had been confiscated at customs when traffickers tried to smuggle them into our country.

  They eagerly observe these little beings, so very different from themselves, as they move around and breathe behind each window of the vivarium. There are stick insects that resemble fallen leaves, snakes with fixed, sidelong gazes that look sinister even if they turn out not to be poisonous and whose scales appear incredibly delicate and strange; it’s delightful and astonishing to see these odd, lithe specimens moving almost imperceptibly along a crooked liana vine. They watch as immense tortoises, some over a hundred years old, drag their massive shells like bronze armor and laboriously raise their clawed, leathery feet, stretching their wrinkled necks toward the water of the sunken pond they’ve known all their lives. The couple is enchanted by the sudden strangeness and novelty of nature, as if discovering these animals for the first time; by the insects’ whimsical bodies in the shape of twigs or lengths of string; by the dangerous, nearly fluorescent amphibians; by the giant reptiles from the Galapagos Islands that they call prehistoric, for want of a better term.

  They pause for a moment before an enormous, bright green iguana who emphatically ignores them. The animal crouches sideways, head high, crest erect, hooked claws gripping a branch. They marvel at his eye, no bigger than the head of a pin, set in the tip of a cone-shaped eyelid, his skin as rumpled as the folds of a toga. His fat, drooping belly and the multiple creases under his chin are markers of a certain age, and his self-important air distinguishes him from the other creatures of whom he clearly considers himself the king. He keeps still as a statue, indifferent to his two attentive visitors, though they’ve been watching him for some time now. Suddenly, he decides to change position, but he loses his balance and his foot slips down: stiff with fright at the edge of an abyss, he somehow straightens himself to keep from falling,
at the same time releasing a trickle of urine that completely soaks the rare vegetation at the base of his habitat. The scene could be called “Grandeur and Degradation,” so quickly has the poor fellow gone from one state to another, having simply wanted to move a few centimeters to the left.

  The vivarium is terribly old and charming with its checkered mosaic of 1930s tiles, a low ceiling and round pillars of rugged concrete, with footsteps that resound on the floor, grinding bits of loose gravel carried in on the soles of shoes, and words that amplify and blend together in an echo like the hubbub that rises from school courtyards. The sight of each new cage fills them with a mix of curiosity and apprehension before they discover which creature it houses.

  Farther on, the couple is captivated by the orangutans: a young one, in particular, nestling at its mother’s breast, with eyes round as marbles set in a wrinkled face, a tuft of ginger hair planted on the very top of its head. It’s the first time they can remember watching animals so closely and they feel at ease in this place, among creatures who are born and die in their own way, who survive, perish, form clans, and care for their young before finally releasing them into the wild—not here, of course, but in theory.

  HIS SON AND DAUGHTER ARE grown. Long divorced, he lives like a bachelor in a small apartment bought with his inheritance, the largest room of which serves as a studio. For years he’s continued to paint in his free time, despite an almost total absence of visibility and recognition. Though relatively open minded, he’s always been a bit conservative when it comes to art history and never once questioned the traditional instruction he likely received in his small coastal town. To his mind, painting alone is noble, with oils preferably, and in a figurative style or at least one that depicts an easily recognizable subject. Rather than expose them to the world’s pitiless gaze, he prefers to remain in seclusion with his canvases, smoking blond-tobacco cigarettes and drinking wine; that is, except for once or twice a year when the studios in his neighborhood open their doors and a few friends and neighbors come by to chat, helping themselves to crackers from an old ceramic bowl and admiring the passageways normally closed to the public, the ivy-covered walls of buildings in this corner of Paris. Who’d have known such charming places still exist—all you have to do is open a door to find yourself in another world, you’d almost think you were in the countryside. It’s so very agreeable. Have you lived here long? Do you rent or own? It must be very expensive now. You’re lucky to have bought at the right time. It’s impossible to find such places these days; people form networks and let their neighbors know even before they post an ad, or else you have to be friendly with the concierge.